Defending
Formula 1 World Champion
Kimi Raikkonen has stressed that BMW-Sauber cannot be written out of the battle for the laurels this year, after
Robert Kubica's breakthrough victory in the Canadian Grand Prix at the weekend moved the Pole to the top of the drivers' standings and BMW within just three points of the constructors' lead.
Kubica's stunning success came in
BMW's 42nd race in the top flight in its own right, and his 29th, and more than three-and-a-half years since the Bavarian marque had last stood atop the podium as purely an engine supplier, when Juan-Pablo Montoya prevailed for
Williams in the 2004 Brazilian Grand Prix.
It was BMW's ninth rostrum appearance since its debut as a constructor less than three years ago, and accomplished the squad's stated aim of winning a race in its third season. Now, Raikkonen maintains, they could well go on to challenge for the championship.
They're scoring points all the time and now they're one and two so nobody can count them out,
The Canadian Press quotes the Finn who was taken out of the race in Montreal by chief title rival
Lewis Hamilton in the pit-lane as saying. [Kubica] is up four points on Lewis and [Felipe] Massa and seven points on me, so he has quite a nice gap, but I'd rather let him win than somebody else.
BMW's joy on Sunday was completed, as Raikkonen said, by
Nick Heidfeld coming home second meaning that, like Jordan Grand Prix at Spa ten years before them, the outfit's maiden success had not been merely a victory, but indeed a one-two.
Heidfeld had at one point during the race looked odds-on for the top step of the podium, after pulling out a lead of some eleven seconds following the early safety car intervention, as
Honda's
Rubens Barrichello held up the chasing pack. Ultimately, however, the experienced German who has struggled this season to warm his tyres up sufficiently quickly could not live with his team-mate's scintillating pace and was forced to settle for the runner-up spot.
